Sometimes leaders need to follow.
As members of Borough Park’s Orthodox Jewish community on Sunday grieved a mother and two young children killed by a recidivist speeder, the neighborhood’s Assembly member refused to support a legislative push to prevent such horrors, arguing that there are "too many" speed cameras and that it's completely normal to race around the kid-filled neighborhood at 11 miles per hour over the speed limit.
Residents who attended the funeral of Natasha Saada and her daughters, Diana and Deborah, said they support a state bill that would require the cars of repeat speeders to be fitted with a device that prevents the car from exceeding the speed limit by more than five miles per hour.
But Assembly Member Michael Novakhov, a Republican who attended the funeral, used the occasion to complain about such efforts to rein in speeders.
“What I don't like about the bill is it says six red-light or speed violations in one year [triggers the installation of the speed-limiting device]. I think this is too little," Novakhov, a former radio host, told Streetsblog. "Any driver can get much more than six. ... Sometimes you don't see the camera. Sometimes there are situations where you have to speed up a little bit. To be honest with you, I'm against the cameras because we have too many."
One mourner, who has lived in the community all his life, was appalled that his Assembly member would say such a thing at the victims' funeral.
“'Anybody can get six tickets?' Look at the dead bodies we have,” said David Reiss. “That law should be passed, it must be passed. How could you say something like that after this tragedy? What does it take to keep someone off the street? [The driver] was a tragedy waiting to happen.”
According to police and state records, driver Miriam Yarimi had been operating her Audi at high speed with a suspended license, something she would not have been able to do had state Sen. Andrew Gounardes's bill become law. Yarimi would have been subject to its requirement to have her speeding mechanically checked, owing to the 14 speed-camera tickets and two red-light tickets she had amassed in the last 12 months.
Overall, since August 2024, she has racked up 20 speed-camera tickets and four red-light tickets. Yet she was still driving.
And still speeding. According to cops, she sped through a red light on Ocean Parkway at Quentin Road at around 1 p.m. on Saturday, slamming into another car and careening into the Saada family, killing three and injuring a 4-year-old boy, who remains in critical condition.
Other residents agreed that more needs to be done to hold speeding drivers accountable.
“I’m shaken up. We walk here all the time, we were actually walking at around 1 p.m. yesterday in this area,” said Sofia Khavin. “Something has to be done with the violations, people who keep breaking traffic rules and they keep getting away with it. It’s wrong and it needs to change, it has to be you get a certain amount of tickets and you don't get better you get a suspended license, spend time in jail, something like that.”
Activist Amber Adler, who began advocating with Families for Safe Streets after she was hit by a car driver and badly injured in 2016, says she and her neighbors are fed up with the status quo.
“If there was ever a moment to pass this bill, it would be this moment,” said Adler. “I posted about this, and I was immediately contacted by people from all parts of the Jewish community and other neighboring residents who thought legislation like this, the speed limiter legislation, was common sense. They were like, ‘How can we get this? What do you want me to do? I'll help.’ People are outraged, but also highly motivated to demand change now.”
Change in this community has been a long time coming. Ocean Parkway is one of the most dangerous stretches of roadway in Brooklyn, with six lanes of traffic and wide-open intersections that encourage speeding.
In 2001, two girls were mowed down by the driver of a speeding Porsche as they waited to cross Ocean Parkway at Avenue X. In 2019, just a block away from where Saada and her children were killed, a speeding driver hit and killed an 87-year-old cyclist. And last year, a speeding driver injured 17 people after starting a chain reaction of fender benders.
On the 5.5-mile stretch of highway since February 2020, there have been 1,884 reported crashes, causing 1,235 injuries to 144 cyclists, 218 pedestrians and 826 motorists, and six fatalities. On just a single block of Ocean Parkway, between Quentin Road and Avenue P, where Saturday's crash occurred, there have been 111 reported crashes, causing 91 injuries in the last five years.
“I literally started advocating for safety in this area with my kids in a double stroller, and they're 11 and almost 13 now, so it has been a long fight,” said Adler.
Historically, lawmakers elected by South Brooklyn’s Orthodox community have been staunchly against street safety fixes; Novakhov is certainly not the first such official to make excuses for reckless drivers.
Assembly Member Kalman Yeger, who also represented the neighborhood in the City Council from 2018 to 2024, voted twice against the expansion of the city’s speed camera system — which allows the DOT to install cameras only within a quarter-mile of a school. Those cameras are only triggered when a driver exceeds the speed limit by 11 or more miles per hour. And the tickets do not count against a driver's license, making it difficult to get repeat scofflaws off the streets.
Yeger's replacement in the Council, former state Sen. Simcha Felder, is also soft on vehicular crime. Felder was the sole Senate Democrat to vote against an expansion of the speed camera program in 2014. He also campaigned in 2018 to increase motorist speeds on deadly Ocean Parkway, where the Saada family was senselessly killed. (Felder did not return a call left at his City Council office on Sunday.)
And Novakhov didn’t take the constituent concern seriously, instead telling Streetsblog the outrage is normal after an “accident.”
“Of course, after such tragedies, after such accidents, everybody tells you that they want to see more cameras around,” he told Streetsblog outside of the funeral. “But I think honestly we have too many cameras, and that's not helping the situation. And the cameras would not stop someone like Miriam who killed that family. … [the cameras] are punishing the regular drivers, not people like her.”
Mayor Adams also attended Sunday's funeral, but entered through a back door and exited quickly before the procession through the streets. At a press conference one day earlier, the Mayor called the horrific crash “a tragic, tragic accident of a Shakespearean proportion.”
The only thing with an oversized proportion, however, is Ocean Parkway, whose 70 feet of width accommodates three lanes for cars in each direction. The wide roadway acts as a speedway for drivers, even though the limit is 25 miles per hour. Residents told Streetsblog that they witness drivers speeding every day and fear crossing the street.
The Department of Transportation has not recommended any major changes on Ocean Parkway, even though it has calmed other speedways — such as Eastern Parkway, the Grand Concourse, Queens Boulevard, Hylan Boulevard — with great success over the years.
Queens Boulevard used to be referred to as "the Boulevard of Death," but since DOT's redesign, road fatalities have dropped 68 percent and pedestrian injuries are down 45 percent.
On Monday, Transportation Alternatives will rally with "speed limiter" bill sponsors Gounardes and his Assembly counterpart Emily Gallagher at Brooklyn Borough Hall, miles away from the crash site. It is unclear if any elected official from the affected neighborhood will show up.
